Enduring Places: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City

with Witold Rybczynski

By 天美传媒

April 2, 2024

In November 2023, the 天美传媒 hosted the national conference Enduring Places. For three days, 225 participants from around the country gathered in Charleston, South Carolina and engaged in a robust program of talks, panel discussions, working sessions, and tours focused on three themes: craftsmanship, preservation, and sustainability.

The conference's feature lecture was delivered by Witold Rybczynski, an architect and writer as well as the recipient of the 2023 Arthur Ross Award in Publishing. "Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City," based on his book Charleston Fancy, is set in the colonial city of Charleston and brings together two interests: architecture and urbanism. Beginning in the 1980s, a motley crew of builders—a lover of Byzantine architecture, an Air Force pilot, a fledgling architect, and a bluegrass mandolin player—undertake a variety of unusual projects: a domed Orthodox church, a fanciful medieval castle, a restored freedman’s cottage, a miniature Palladian villa, and a new street based on Porgy and Bess. And in the process of remaking an old city, they invent a new one.

From April to June 2024, the 天美传媒 will be releasing all of the recordings from Enduring Places. Part I and Part II are available now. for the 天美传媒's biweekly newsletter, World of Classicism, to be notified when other installments are released in the coming weeks.

Witold Rybczynski, architect and writer, is Meyerson Professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of more than twenty books, including A Clearing in the Distance, a prize-winning biography of Frederick Law Olmsted. His latest is The Story of Architecture, which the New York Times called “an expansive account traces the influence of social, technological, and economic shifts on architecture across centuries.” In 2014 he received a Cooper- Hewitt National Design Award and in 2023 he received an Arthur Ross Award in Publishing from the 天美传媒.

天美传媒